King Crimson: Classic Or Dud

fripp did an album with mel collins and jakko jakwhatsit last year, so he hasn't been retired for 4 years. it was a bit disappointing, definitely not the new lease on KC I think they were hoping for.

Well it certainly wasnt the new lease on KC I was hoping for.

If the '72-74 lineup reunited I would buy a ticket in about 5 seconds flat. Anything beyond that, I don't really care.

Pretty sure Cross & Wetton are the only ones game for that.

I'd be up for another outing of any other combination that the last 2 though (the Jakko one or previous I mean).

Fripp has such a narrow comfort range anymore that I wouldn't see him live unless he personally invited me into his living room to hear him play. I don't need the grief while he tries to figure out whether he can midwife any music.

Mentioned it before, but the last King Crimson tour I saw - Levin, Belew, Fripp, Mastelotto and the drummer from Porcupine Tree - really was awesome. There was a Fripp-less Crimson that toured with Dream Theater a couple of months ago. Believe it was basically Belew and his all-kid band, plus Levin and Mastelotto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wpTOxb1nFw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGJ_IC8OZMo&feature=relmfu

Looks like every one in a while on tour the drummer from Tool sat in for a few songs as second (third?) drummer.

Why have Belew, Lake, Levin, Gunn, Wetton & Mastelotto never toured together? All of them seem quite happy to tour Crim material sans Fripp.

Straightforward q: what do you guys reckon the best live version of 'Fracture'? I remembered the Asbury Park one killing it, but I just listened to it and was kinda not feeling it so much. Haven't dug out the live box in a while.

The Central Park show the from the folloeing day is to my mind the best, followed by the one of the 2 versions on the Great Deceiver, can't remember which one.

Thx

Central Park = one of the KCCC releases?

i would totally go see any lineup, even without fripp, again. missed the belew/levin retrospective lineup thing last time it went though. I would have loved to have seen 21st century schizoid band also (who jakko was in). I think jakko was the wrong person for fripp to bring in for that last release, he's too much of a follower; he's fine, but not distinctive in any way.

I dunno, any approximation of KC without Fripp seems kind of missing the point. I did see 21st Century Schizoid Band and I thought it was fairly pedestrian

I have a hard time believing Fripp is truly retired.

Retired and working harder than ever. He reminds me of a border collie patiently working the livestock (UMG, Sanctuary, etc) into a corral to be taken to slaughter.

Considering Fripp often lead guitar schools and workshops over the past few decades whose main point appeared to have been indoctrinating students in his precise methods and reshaping them in his (musical) image, it's actually really easy to imagine Crimson without him. Send in the clones!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_in_Central_Park,_NYC
xpost to Jon Lewis

yes but according to him they are all hopeless!

xp

League of Hopeless Guitarists

Anyway, Belew has really been the dominent component over the past three decades. Fripp is awesome, but other dudes are more than capable of doing what he's been doing.

Anyone ever see any of the ProjeKCts? I saw one configuration that was Fripp on guitar (sounding like a marimba), Trey Gunn on bass, and Belew on drums (the entire night!). It kind of sucked, but it was neat to see something different.

Never saw them, but I have the 4CD ProjeKcts box set and I have to say it's given me more listening pleasure than any KC album post-Red.

I'll be on the lookout for that - the whole ConstruKction of Light era is my personal KC nadir so I try to avoid that, though I admit the live recordings of this period are surprisingly good. The improv on Heavy ConstruKction (the three disc set that ends with Fripp snatching and eating some dude's camera) is the best since the Great Deceiver (or better), I'd say

He does that on one of the live albums in this ProjeKcts box as well, can't remember which one. The set is worth hunting down just for the liner notes, which as ever are a total hoot.

Are the liner notes in third person? Fripp is really into that. "At this point our stalwart hero Fripp set down his instrument of choice, took a sip of tea, then flung the remains of the boiling water at the hirsute man in the front with the camera pointed at his face."

I had the box for a while, but it reminded me of the Zappa quote: "why would a first rate guitarist want to sound like a third rate saxophonist?" Except Fripp sounded like a marimba.

holy shit, someone on discogs has uploaded scans of the entire box set, liner notes and all:

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=703298

Though I haven't listened to them all, for me the most satisfying Projekct release is P3 Live in Alexandria.

http://www.discogs.com/ProjeKct-Three-Live-In-Alexandria-VA-March-3-2003/release/3886963

Belew can't make the gig so they play a Crim set without him. Fripp overcompensates in a good way--everybody's ferocious, and there's a bit more space in the music than you'd normally hear from that lineup.

It gives me incredible melancholia that Fripp hasn't licensed any of this stuff to Spotify. I would never buy the ProjeKct stuff in a million years but would love to go through a few weeks obsessing over it.

On a giant live 1973-4 binge right now, the Night Watch and Great Deceiver sets are incredible.

Around 94-95 Crimson was playing across the street from the bookstore I worked in at the time. Fripp approached me looking for the Financial Times (evidently the only paper he reads, I didn't know that at the time). I timidly asked if he was indeed Fripp as I handed over the pink paper. He replied 'No.'

Such was my brush with greatness. I never got to see the show, which was a shame since that was a good album and tour. Belew also stopped in and was by all accounts an approachable and all-around nice dude.

Fripp's online diary is really charming, I like his utter commitment to being an English Country Gentleman.

one of those groups who seem to be the best band in the world when you hear them first and who get more and more boring with each subsequent listen. this is especially true for the first two records. some of the others have been noodling from the beginning on. that would actually be an interesting criterion to classify bands. those who get better the more you listen to them and those who don't. some get better until a certin point and then you as a listener "exasperate" their music, eg talk talk which i have started to be a little fed up with.

i wanted to say exhaust not exasperate. the ear gets exhausted by the music.

i can definitely sympathize. The Great Deceiver is an awesome set but I question anyone who claims they can listen to all four discs at once.

Isn't all prog rock exhausting after a while? It is for me, maybe it's the earnestness, the focus on craft, and the busy-ness? Too much seriousness and music to handle.

Noticing how each album with a 'fresh' lineup (Court, Larks, Discipline) is usually the best of that lineup, then the quality falls off with each subsequent record, which leads to a breakup, a hiatus, and eventually a new lineup and a new decent record.

Four discs at once a la Zaireeka? That could be interesting! (xpost)

xp: i quite liked beat but it was only the second with the same line-up. but it was quite different from discipline which i don't reember well, wasn't it?

I think each LP in the 80s sequence got more accessible. Discipline has some of the craziest time-signature workouts

your theory would require Red to be the least of the power trio/qtets lineup which, well...

The second half of "Three of a Perfect Pair" is possibly the least accessible of that era of the band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJCuAN9_qXg

Ugh, that reminds me of Eno's Drop which is awful - damn you for destroying my obviously-very-well-thought-out theory ;)

Have some Fripp on cable access being arch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tYgwk_ngek

That "Industry" track is, iirc, an example of Bill Bruford's theory of lead drums.

Can you talk about that Josh? 'bruford lead drums' is kinda ungoogleable

Drums are the lead instrument.

Either that or he means Bruford's Simmons kit swung about as hard as an anvil.

I think his idea was that drummers are always relegated to the backbeat in rock, even in prog, so with Simmons pads in hand (as it were) he wanted to integrate himself into the group as more than just rhythm keeper. I suppose it's not terribly dif. than some free jazz drummers, like Rashied Ali or something, though Bruford was trying to fit it into Fripp's regimented anal-retentive scheme. So while it wasn't really "free" in that sense, he was trying (on tracks like "Industry," at least) to drum differently.

I guess he pursued the idea more forcefully in Earthworks, with the gist that in most bands the drums are the sole acoustic instrument, but in Earthworks, they were the sole electric instrument.

Found this somewhere:

Industrial rock was becoming a genre unto itself in the early 1980s; the German group Einsturzende Neubauten used power drills, jackhammers, broken glass, elevator springs, and toy keyboards on their 1981 debut album Kollaps. King Crimson IV toyed with the concept: several songs ("Indiscipline," "Neurotica," "Dig Me," "No Warning") contained an imaginative array of metallic clashes, clangs, sirens, factory sounds, and the like. One instrumental, "Industry," was a dedicated study in nuanced noise: over an ominous one-pitch bass ostinato repeating every nine beats unfolds, with rising intensity, a succession of guitar synthesizer layers, spasmodic drum fills, mechanical sound effects, orchestroid outbursts, and sky-saws. "Industry," a brilliantly effective tableau, may sound improvised, but Belew said it was the result of much pre-planning: "Bill had the idea of the orchestral snare drum. Robert and I developed all the guitar ideas very carefully - the harmonies and things. It's supposed to give you a feeling of walking through a factory."